The National Telepathy by Roque Larraquy
An Argentinian satirical science fiction novel unlike anything you’ve ever read, newly translated into English by Frank Wynne
The National Telepathy is a graphic, acerbic work of satirical science fiction unlike anything you’re likely to have ever read – unless you’re familiar with Argentinian writer Roque Larraquy’s two preceding novels. Raised a Marxist in Buenos Aires, his books share a central pre-occupation with the darkness inherent to his country’s right-wing political discourse.
The main text is narrated first by the nameless assistant to Amado Dam, a 1930s rubber oligarch, then by the vile Amado himself. A sloth is discovered amongst the otherwise human cargo of a Peruvian ship delivering undocumented indigenous tribespeople to an ‘ethnopark’ – a human safari set to be the first of its kind. Soon, it is discovered that the sloth can connect two people in orgasmic, telepathic bliss. What has the potential to unlock the interconnectedness of all living things is instead, to Dam, two things; Firstly, an ugly battle between unadulterated pleasure and his own disdainful prejudices; and secondly, a business opportunity.
The documents in the book’s appendices go on to tell of the sloth’s adoption by multiple governments as an evolving tool of surveillance and propaganda. Within them is a whole other phantom book that extends the main text’s central critique. The National Telepathy is a stupefying clarion call for how a white, cis-het male elite will strip something of all of its revolutionary potential, weaponising it if need be, to stay on top.
